Guys, it's time to woman up and take on the gig

Birth control for men is nigh, so why are we finding it so difficult to comprehend?

Photo: Knocked Up

Women around the world are collectively LOLing after the breakthrough study of a male contraceptive (which was found to be 96 per cent effective) was stopped after a small percentage of men experienced side effects like mood swings, muscle pain and acne.

Yes ladies, you know the ones, the very same god damn side effects that women have been experiencing since the pill was invented in the 1960s.

Oh, the irony!

Let’s look at this a little closer, shall we?

The study trialled a hormonal contraceptive injection for men - containing a combination of progesterone and a form of testosterone – that was administered to 320 blokes every eight weeks.

The good news? It was 96 per cent effective, about the same as the female pill! Hoorah!

The bad news? Apparently the study was terminated because 20 participants dropped out of the study due to concerns about the side effects including moodiness, acne, muscle pain. Oh puh-lease!

“Fellas, you need to WOMAN UP” was the collective outcry from females the world over.

“Men are clearly not woman enough to handle the hormones!” they added.

And that’s without the sore boobs, the cramps, the headaches and the inconvenience that comes with a monthly visit from the red devil.

In 2015, a study published by Roy Morgan research found that just over 2.5 million Australian women or 47.9 per cent of us between the ages of 18 and 49 are using some form of contraception, with 44.5 per cent of women in the same age group taking the pill.

That’s 2.5 million women every day dealing with the side effects that were considered “unacceptable” and “intolerable” in a male contraceptive.

And yet in 2016, five decades after women began accepting the mood swings and acne as an inconvenience for a greater good of preventing a pregnancy, it seems men aren’t up for that kind of gig.

So while we may have just found equality in contraception after fifty years of women shouldering the responsibility of remembering to take a pill every single day, the researchers have gone back to the drawing board.

I would love my significant other to take a hormonal male contraceptive purely so I could ask him every few days when he was annoying me if he was “moody” because of THE JAB.

“Are you on your jab?” I would ask him every time he didn’t agree with me about something or looked at me weird. It’s fun, isn’t it?

It must also be mentioned that three per cent of the male participants reported experiencing depression as a result of the trial. That’s one of the 320 participants.

While depression is undoubtedly a severe side effect and should be treated as such, a recent report on female contraception which was published in September this year found the very same link at a much higher rate in women, but the findings were largely ignored.

"I immediately thought of the recent findings on female birth control," Elisabeth Lloyd, a faculty scholar, professor of biology and an adjunct professor of philosophy at Indiana University Bloomington told CNN. "Twenty per cent or 30 per cent of the women who take oral birth control pills experience depression and have to take medication for it. So the difference just struck me. They terminated this study once it showed 3 per cent depression for the men."

On a more positive note, despite the side effects for the 20 poor buggers who dropped out, at the end of the trial three-quarters of the men said they would be willing to continue using the contraceptive jab.

So there’s hope yet. 75 per cent of the men involved in the trial are happy to finally equally share the responsibility of contraception with their partners.

On another note, I can’t wait to see what they call the male contraceptive after years us gals popping a Yazmin and Diane every damn day. Gary or Bruce, perhaps?